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The madness and love that built the periodic table

SAM KEAN tells us that “90 per cent of particles in the universe are hydrogen, and the other 10 per cent are helium. Everything else, including 6 million billion billion kilograms of Earth, is a cosmic rounding error.” It is this rounding error that provides the fascinating content of The Disappearing Spoon.

Kean’s interest in the chemical elements began as a young boy when his mother collected the spilt contents of thermometers and stored them in a plastic pill bottle. By all accounts, Kean was a sickly child and a clumsy one too, so there was much mercury to be had. His mother would pour …